“Because without water and neither there nor here”: water supply in Kostroma

November 13, 1870 solemnly consecrated Kostroma water supply.

Before that, water was drawn directly from the Volga and other rivers, streams and streams of the city. Away from the sources of moisture dug wells. The most delicious was considered Volga water from the "seven keys" that under Kadkina Mountain (now it is Gornaya Street).

Denis Davydov, the same partisan, the hero of the war with Napoleon, left memories of his relative, the conqueror of the Caucasus Alexei Yermolov.

At the end of the XVIII century, the then unknown lieutenant colonel was sent to Kostroma in exile. He sled down a mountain, hit a woman who was carrying buckets of water from seven keys. She turned out to be the mother of the rector of the temple of John the Theologian on Kadkin Hill. To atone for the guilt, the future conqueror of the Caucasus had to settle with the protopopus and carry heavy buckets from the Volga every day.

While there were few people in the city, nature coped. But after the reforms of the 1860s, the population began to increase. In just two decades of the middle of the XIX century, the number of Kostromichs doubled, and waste continued to flow into the Volga.

The City Council has long thought about solving the water problem. Reorganized in a new position in 1870, it took a decisive step: on the banks of the Volga staged a water intake, pumps pumped water to the water tower on Resurrection Square (now Soviet Square). From there, the water came to small water-disposal booths with tanks at the top and taps. Everything was thought out by Kostroma mechanic Konstantin Tsyganov, calculated everything that concerned metal.

They checked the water and were horrified.

It turned out that "water in r." The Volga receives a large amount of impurities partly from the fact that it gets sewage from the area occupied by the city during the rain, partly from the fact that the river bank during the entire navigation time is occupied by ships, forests, marinas, fish cages, bathhouses, etc., Partly from the fact that fish traders wash salty fish to clean it of rust, and meat merchants, killing small cattle in the storerooms in the shopping area, dumping animal entrails into the Volga, as well as spoiled meat, when it is not already for sale.”

The owners of six tanneries, which were washed in the Volga water of the skin, then textile factories joined them. Probably, this custom was established from the ages, but before the scale was different, and the fast waters of the great river managed to carry all this necessity away from Kostroma. And water was taken not so much from the Volga as from wells and the famous "Seven Keys". Now all this got into the pipes, which delivered water directly to the distillers, and sometimes directly to the houses of Kostromich.

It became clear to everyone that something had to be done. Ivanov, among other things, recommended “to pave all the streets and squares and monitor the tidy content of them, to make them not only passable, but also to save residents from dust, stench and dirt”, to establish drains, drain ponds and swamps in the city, to organize “strict persecution” not fulfilling the resolutions of the city Duma “regarding the maintenance of the city residents in clean courtyards, garbage pits and latrines.” Manufacturers should be forbidden to discharge waste water into rivers, butchers – waste, stop washing leather, linen and fish above the water intake, put in order streets and squares, arrange public toilets – and then “the water pipeline will not return to us what we spewed out of ourselves or threw away from ourselves.”

Only the upcoming 300th anniversary of the House of Romanoff made the City Duma not only think, but act. According to the project of architect Nikolai Gorlitsyn, a filter station building was built. With the new power plant, stylized as Peter's Baroque, the water structures formed a single ensemble.

At the same time in the Posad forest at the end of Yeleninskaya Street (now Lenin Street) “in the area of Yakimanikha” another water intake with a filter station was arranged. The problem seemed solved. But then it just seemed like...

Today, water flows from the taps in most Kostroma houses. It's hard to find a column outside.

On the blue route of daily excursions"Kostroma at 15:15."You can see an unusual monument to the Kostroma plumber and water valve.

According to the materials of the scientific consultant of the project “Kostroma at 15:15” candidate of cultural studies Larisa Sizintseva.